Sacrificing or taking a significant risk of sacrifice to do what is right.
Someone who wins a sporting competition is not a hero—even if it was very difficult and painful to do. Somebody who is correct, where most people are wrong is not a hero.
I know we all want our heroes to be competent and get it done, but to me that’s not what’s heroic.
When it comes to alignment researchers:
If you are at the beginning of your career and you decide to become an alignment researcher, you are not sacrificing much if anything. AI is booming, alignment is booming—if you do actually relevant work, you will be at the frontline of the most important technology for years to come.
If you are deeply embedded into the EA and rationalist community, you’ll be high status where it matters to you.
That doesn’t mean your work is less important, but it does mean you are not being heroic.
How about this as advice to be less stressed out: Don’t think of your life as an epic drama. Just do what you think is necessary and don’t fret about it.
The best example I can recall of what you’re describing is the members of La Résistance in France during WW2. These people risked their lives and the lives of their family in order to blow up German rails, smuggle out Jews and kill key Gestapo operatives. They did not consider themselves heroes, because for them this was simply the logical course of action, the only way to act for a person with a shred of common sense. Most of them are dead now but along their lives they repeated that if France considered them to be heroes (which it did) that would defeat the point: that doing what they did should not be extraordinary, but common sense.
You’re right about the epic drama thing. Poetic flare can be useful in certain situations, I imagine, although it is a fine line between using that as motivation and spoiling rationality. (Poetry, as in beauty and fun, is a terminal goal of humanity so I would also advise against ignoring it entirely.)
Sacrificing or taking a significant risk of sacrifice to do what is right.
Someone who wins a sporting competition is not a hero—even if it was very difficult and painful to do. Somebody who is correct, where most people are wrong is not a hero.
I know we all want our heroes to be competent and get it done, but to me that’s not what’s heroic.
When it comes to alignment researchers:
If you are at the beginning of your career and you decide to become an alignment researcher, you are not sacrificing much if anything. AI is booming, alignment is booming—if you do actually relevant work, you will be at the frontline of the most important technology for years to come.
If you are deeply embedded into the EA and rationalist community, you’ll be high status where it matters to you.
That doesn’t mean your work is less important, but it does mean you are not being heroic.
How about this as advice to be less stressed out: Don’t think of your life as an epic drama. Just do what you think is necessary and don’t fret about it.
The best example I can recall of what you’re describing is the members of La Résistance in France during WW2. These people risked their lives and the lives of their family in order to blow up German rails, smuggle out Jews and kill key Gestapo operatives. They did not consider themselves heroes, because for them this was simply the logical course of action, the only way to act for a person with a shred of common sense. Most of them are dead now but along their lives they repeated that if France considered them to be heroes (which it did) that would defeat the point: that doing what they did should not be extraordinary, but common sense.
You’re right about the epic drama thing. Poetic flare can be useful in certain situations, I imagine, although it is a fine line between using that as motivation and spoiling rationality. (Poetry, as in beauty and fun, is a terminal goal of humanity so I would also advise against ignoring it entirely.)